Addicted to Facebook?

For those of you who are enjoying the numerous social networking sites available, you know that it can be extremely addicting and difficult to curb your usage once you get on a roll. The sites are a lot of fun, and it's a great way to stay connected to your friends and business colleagues. Under normal circumstances, this activity isn't a big deal. But like email, many of these sites and programs can be a real productivity and time-sucker. If you have a real deadline or an in-depth project to work on that requires your full attention, it can become easy to slip into procrastination mode and check out your friends' status updates and wall posts instead. Or if you are out to dinner with friends or family, maybe you are tempted to pull out the Blackberry and update twitter with your current status, thereby missing out on the time with the ones you love.

I always recommend to clients that they set aside specific time for web surfing and personal email as much as possible. If they have a big project and shouldn't be interrupted, I recommend closing the email program for at least an hour at a time so that there are no distractions. The same holds true for the social networking sites. If your daily responsibilities involve answering short emails and phone calls throughout the day, and you don't have a significant project ahead of you, there's less harm in multiple visits to your favorite site. But if you really need to focus, turn it off. Try giving yourself a time limit - of say, 15 minutes. Set a timer or alarm on your cell phone if necessary. When the time is up, close the browser and focus on your task at hand. You can always check back in during a break later in the day.